Land resources

Hainan Island makes up 42.5 percent of the nation's total tropical land, with an average per capita possession of 0.48 hectares of land used for agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery. As a result of such excellent conditions as sunlight, heat and water, farmlands here can be cultivated anytime of the year, and many plants can yield two or three crops a year.

Based on their suitability, the land in Hainan Island can break down into seven major categories: that suitable for farming, for rubber planting, for tropical crops growing, for forestation, for livestock breeding, for aquaculture, and for other purposes. Currently, 3.152 million hectares of land in Hainan Island have been cultivated, while 260,000 hectares remain virgin soil, around 90 percent of which are potential farming lands. Most wastelands awaiting reclamation join together, favorable for large-scale exploitation and tractor-ploughing.

Salt resources

Hainan Island is China's ideal natural saltworks. Salt can be made by evaporating brine in the sun along its long coast stretching for hundreds of miles from Sanya to Dongfang. At present, several large saltworks, such as Yinggehai, Dongfang and Yuya, have been developed.

Mineral resources

Hainan has commercially exploitable reserves of more than 30 minerals. Iron, first mined by the Japanese during their occupation of the island in World War II, is the most important. Other important mineral resources are titanium, manganese, tungsten, bauxite, molybdenum, cobalt, copper, gold, and silver. There are large deposits of lignite and oil shale on the island, and significant offshore finds of oil and natural gas have been discovered.

Explorations up to 1991 show that among the 148 minerals with verified workable reserves nationwide, 57 (or 65 if classified based on their potential industrial purposes) are of certain mining value in Hainan. In addition, 126 mineral deposits (including six large groundwater sources) have had their reserves verified.

Over 10 varieties of superior minerals produced here hold a very important position in China's mining industry, including glass-quality quartz sand, natural gas, titanium, zircon, sapphire, crystal, gibbsite, oil shale and zeolite.

The reserves of iron ore accounts for roughly 70 percent of the country's high-grade iron ore reserves. The reserves of titanium and zircon make up 70 and 60 percent of the country's total respectively. In addition, gold, granite and mineral water here are of significant developmental value.

Hainan abounds with oil and natural gas. General survey and exploration have targeted three large sedimentation basins – the Beibu Gulf, Yingge Sea and southeast Hainan – with a total area of around 120,000 square kilometers, of which 60,000 square kilometers prospect well with oil-gas mines. The potential reserves of hydroelectricity on Hainan Island amount to 1 million kilowatts, of which 650,000 kilowatts are expected to generate 2.6 billion kw/h of electricity annually.

The volume of groundwater hits about 7.5 billion cubic meters, making up 20 percent of Hainan's total water reserves, and approximately 2.53 billion cubic meters are potentially exploitable. Its untapped energy sources with great potentialities include ocean energy, solar energy and bioelectricity.

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